Bono feared his high-profile campaigning against global poverty might force him out of U2, he told BBC Radio 4 at the weekend.
He told the Today programme on Saturday that his campaigning activities had "raised eyebrows" among his fellow band members. "They are hugely supportive spiritually and financially of the work I do, but they are in a rock 'n' roll band and the first job of a rock 'n' roll band is not to be dull. So we have to be very careful about just letting me go too far.
"When I do my rant on making poverty history, I have got Larry Mullen, our drummer, behind me looking at his watch, timing me.
"There was one point when I thought 'I'm going to be thrown out of the band for this stuff'."
But he said he now felt the other band members recognised that U2's audience appreciate what he is doing.
Looking back on the anti-poverty campaigns of 2005, Bono said the agreements on aid and debt cancellation reached by the world's most powerful nations at the G8 summit in Gleneagles in July were "a very big step" towards achieving the millennium development goal of halving extreme poverty by 2015.
But he said he was "completely gutted" by the outcome of this month's World Trade Organisation talks in Hong Kong, which failed to make a breakthrough on fairer trade for developing countries. - (PA)